The Smeargle Community
by EkaSwede
Summary: In a community consisting of many smeargle, a new one enters to experience the oddities within it.
1. The New Member

Nuts to the disclaimer!

_**The smeargle community**_

Today was your first day as an official member of a community you had heard of a few days ago. You, along with every other member of the community, had always had a passion for art, and had always wanted to show your work to the rest of the world. You wanted to show the community your future works of art, and even get a slight recognition too.

You were the painter pokémon smeargle, an artist. And you wanted to unleash you imagination and show your piece of work to this community.

But you decided not to be hasty, and took a stroll through the seemingly endless chambers to watch other paintings painted by other smeargle. It seemed rather hard to navigate at first in this gigantic place, but thanks to some unexplained magic, it was possible to sort out which pieces of arts you wanted to see.

Unfortunately, the magic didn't allow you to sort out the masterpieces. You shrugged; you couldn't have everything. You felt a little nervous, even though you had navigated the community as anonymous smeargle and viewed some of the art. You remembered how some pieces were beautiful illustrations of pokémon like Lugia and its aeroblast attack. The perfection, the brilliance, the setting. _Must've taken ages to achieve such skill to illustrate that very move to pure perfection,_ you thought, still remembering the piece of art you gawked at for hours.

Thinking of that magnum opus made the tip of your tail tingle, and some of the yellowish paint seemed to ooze from the tip. A smeargle's paint colour from the tip of its tail varied from smeargle to smeargle, but usually that wasn't a valid argument of how well one painted. A true artist never needed to have a special colour. A true artist could create a masterpiece without paint.

You think over your last claim, and laugh silently to yourself. As you strolled down the corridor, you watched the freshly put up works. _Some are pretty good, especially for first-timers,_ you thought, taking a few looks at the illustrations of different pokémon and their attacks. To your frustration, only a select few were complete at first glance.

Whereas some of the incomplete ones had a touch of brilliance in them, the vast majority of them were… well, not that good for your tastes. But you shrugged and decided not to leave a mark on it.

By marking a piece of art was equivalent to leaving a comment. There were different type of markings, and it was easy to tell who had placed them. If the said marker was a member of the community, that is. Sometimes you would find unidentifiable markings by individuals not members of the community, but usually they weren't a bad sign.

But leaving a bad mark never was a bad thing, since it could very well be a sign of improvement the painter of the art could take notice to. But you felt far too inexperienced to consider making those kinds of marks. Plus, they seemed _very_ rare around here.

You decided to take a look at that marvellous Lugia aeroblast illustration. You headed through the magic sorting corridor and stumbled upon it. You gawked at it with awe, and noted that everything about this piece was perfect. No lines drawn wrong, no colours coloured wrong, and the sole reason the legendary Lugia executes the fantastic attack. It made your nerves tingle with excitement by just looking at it. And, of course, it had a lot of positive markings.

Having finished watching the piece that inspired you to make your own, you walked off to take a look at another legendary illustration. You found one illustrating Mewtwo. While you thought this piece portrayed the psychic type's use of the attack psychic, you could spot some notable mistakes, such as some minor lines being out of place, but it wasn't anything too serious. But this fine piece of art didn't as much markings as the Lugia piece had.

But you liked it, and decided to actually leave a marking, and a positive one.

_This piece had a mysterious, yet a powerful feeling in it. Greatly done, but some lines at the top seemed out of place. Still, you did a good job._

You placed the marking and took the liberty of looking at the previous of the unusual few markings. There was only one of the five that had noted an error you hadn't found, and that was a shading error of the lower part. The other four (your marking was the sixth) didn't say much else than it was good. You shrugged and figured that you had said your thing about the piece, and walked on.

Searching for other pieces to stimulate your free time, you stumbled upon some more incomplete works. Every now and then, the artist would paint a section to add to the whole picture, and when it would finally be complete. How much that would be added varied from artist to artist, but there were some pieces that turned out to become _very big_ in the end. But the size of the illustration was never the vital part of it.

Having looked at the newer updates of various illustrations, you decided to use the teleporting mechanism available only within this community to take a look at much older works. As you checked the older works, you saw some with potential that seemed to never be finished, which you thought was a shame. After having looked at some unfinished works, you actually found some of them really, almost in class with the Lugia piece. You sighed; 'twas a shame that fine piece would never be finished, seeing that the last time another piece of it was added was a long time ago.

You straightened yourself up, and resumed your search for more art to stimulate your desire for studying fine art. You had decided to make sure to see what the average standard of the art was in this community, so you wouldn't make a fool of yourself. After all, you _were_ new.

However, you stumbled upon a painting that was supposed to symbolize an eevee. But there were so many faults in this piece it made you angry. First off, the lining was completely wrong and a lot of the lining was horribly inaccurate. The size of the eevee seemed awkward, with the head being too big, and the background wasn't even close to detailed. And the COLOUR! Why was the eevee coloured effing WHITE?

You facepawed, and was about to leave a very negative marking about this piece. But you hesitated. This piece was already rather old, and to your surprise, finished. And you could see some negative markings about it, so you decided that leaving a mark would be equivalent to keep saying that two plus two equalled four over and over again.

You grumbled a little before walking onwards to find another piece of art to soothe your mind after looking at that horrid piece. You were out of luck, and began to stumble upon more bad works, such as extremely cheesy illustrations of love stories. While you weren't much experienced with love and such, you knew that pokémon wouldn't mate at THIS low age. And the lining of the illustration was almost as bad as the eevee one.

You gave up, and felt that if you tried searching for more art to stimulate yourself, you'd only end up finding bad art. So you called it a day and left the community, heading home to your own place.

_I'll try to create something new,_ you thought as you lay down on your bed. _I'll try to create the piece of art that will give me recognition at the smeargle community. _And with that thought, you went to sleep, and after next day's daily chores, you'd use your free time to begin your self proclaimed masterpiece.


	2. Incomplete Struggling

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon, just so it's over with… gosh…

_**Incomplete struggling**_

You slowly let go of your tail as you gazed upon your yet incomplete work. It had been a long time since you started this piece of work, and even after what had seemed like an agonizing eternity, it wasn't close to finished. It wasn't even halfway finished. Drawing a heavy, frustrated sigh, you look at the painting. It was still bland… and no matter how hard you had tried, it had just become more complicated.

When you joined the smeargle community, you had felt that you had something new, something innovative, something that would make a huge breakthrough in the art world. But yet, you had felt that you had begun suffering from what seemed like imagination constipation. What you thought had been a new idea, was just a form of a bandwagon that you had jumped onto so you could ride the trend.

Problem was, you had failed jumping off the bandwagon in time when the fad had worn out. Now you lay sprawled in the near wrecked remains of what had been the bandwagon. Ideas were getting repetitive, nothing became that innovative, but yet you were fiercely determined to finish your painting. You had had the uplifting feeling that once it had been finished, it could very well have been viewed as a quite good interpretation of the depths of devastation and loss of hope.

Alas, today, it would've just been disregarded as old trash. You knew this, but still… you just wanted to complete this and move on to something more special to paint.

You grabbed a careful hold of the tip of your tail again, aiming it carefully at the canvas to continue on with your self-proclaimed masterpiece. Feeling a slight flicker of imagination, you drew a line slowly and smoothly across the upper left side to emphasize the dark threat the interpretation was going through.

And then, as fast as the flicker of imagination had come, it disappeared.

You dropped the tail once more, staring absentmindedly at the ground with confusion. Would it be worth finishing this painting too quickly? How big would the odds be that the finished paintings would be pushed back by newer works so no one would get a look at you painting? These ponderings were what kept you at a creating stop.

Looking up from the ground, you stared at your painting again. As you studied the painting, you began to get the dreaded feel that maybe it wasn't anything special, maybe it should just be taken away so it wouldn't take up any space of waste in the community and let the better artists have their work up in peace.

You sighed again and put your cream coloured paws on the back of you head, resting while standing up. Even though your piece of work wasn't complete yet, you had still put it up on the viewing chambers for other smeargle to observe. To your surprise it actually _had_ gotten some positive paw markings, indicating that the interpretation was of a somewhat unique material. You moved your left paw and paced it in your forehead, rubbing it slightly. It had been _ages_ since your last painting preview and you were certain that most of the ones who had been checking your incomplete work had tired of the endless waiting for another preview had left to look at other paintings that had more frequent preview updates.

Rubbing your forehead some more, you began to ponder again. You had always had the feeling that other smeargle disregarded your work, ignoring them at first sight and turning to the more current theme of painting that were in the viewing chambers. You thought this because you felt that there were only praising paw markings on your work, no critic perusals or any remarks of misses or visual errors that existed in your paintings.

You stopped rubbing your head and grabbed a hold of your paint tipped tail with both of your paws, gripping it tightly with growing frustration. Was your art not in the same league as the recognized works in the community? You had spent so much time, according to yourself, to improve your drawing styles. But how would you know if your creation was in need of improvement if every paw marking was just meaningless praise? It made you want to scream out loud with perpetual frustration that was beginning to reach its peak. You tied your tail into a small loose knot, careful not to tie it too hard. At least that action symbolized your inner struggling against the creation block that was going on inside your mind.

Maybe the knot would loosen up by itself one day? What if imagination would strike like a thunderbolt? Your brief glimmer of hope quickly faded into a dull gaze when you wondered if that imagination would strike far too late. It would strike at a time when all your faithful watchers of your work had lost interest.

You had betrayed them. You knew they had waited for an update on your painting. Your laziness had made them wait day after day. A painting declared unfinished. When you joined, you had promised yourself to be a faithful updater of your art. And here you stood, unable to do the simplest things as drawing a stroke with your brush tipped tail.

You wondered to yourself if you needed a break. A hiatus. But you couldn't let that happen! You would have to present a large renewing of your work to compensate the pause, and you'd then feel the need to make every new showcase as large as the previous. It was all becoming a spiral of perpetuity. At this rate, you'd risk drawing yourself mad.

But wait, the knot suddenly untied itself! You got a spark of imagination! Not wasting any second of those valuable seconds of excitement, you quickly let your instincts work for you. You could feel your tail running along the smooth canvas material. The paint ooze coming from your tail morphed itself into the correct colours you desired.

You felt whole again for this short moment. It felt like the imagination constipation had disappeared. You felt inspired. Was it the temporary feeling of dread you had had earlier? Or was it the willpower of defiance against betrayal that wanted you to go on?

As you painted, you chose not to think of it for now.


	3. No Mark?

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon. I shouldn't have to repeat myself.

* * *

_**No Mark?**_

With great anticipation and excitement, you made your last finishing touches on your next part of your self-proclaimed masterpiece. You had suffered a long time of artistic block, but when the muse had been discovered, you were more than excited to publish your next part to the rest of the community. To let the few followers of your observers know you had finally bypassed that barrier of creative emptiness further fuelled your imagination.

It was ready for the community to see. For so long had you yearned to make this happen. An update. A new continuation. You could almost feel your heart all aflutter when you set your next piece of painted art up for the rest of the smeargle to see. You expected so many new paw markings under this work commenting and critiquing it. That was one driving factor that fuelled your inspiration and effort. It would usually take a day until the marks would come in, and it was as if you had no patience to wait that long.

But patience was an important virtue in your mind. Signs of impatience usually led to lacklustre quality. And that was something you as an aspiring smeargle would not want to happen to you. You walked back to your abode after showing the art update of yours. It was getting late and it was time for you to sleep anyway. You could barely hide your excitement even in your little bed; you were expecting a lot of comments and marks.

At the dawn of the next day, you rose up from your bed, having been woken up by the pleasant sunrays from your window. Today would be a wonderful day for you. With a wide smile plastered on your doglike face, you almost flamboyantly strutted down the community hallway from your home. You could feel your heart beat speeding up when you were going to check on your work and all the comments. Because this, _this_ is what you had been looking forward to during this entire art block stage. You rounded a corner and finally spotted your art. You eagerly ran up to your painting and looked for any new possible marks.

There were no new marks.

All of your excitement you had had was flushed out in an instant. You felt your shoulders slump down in the immense disappointment that had replaced all your previous feelings. You looked up at it and rubbed your eyes to confirm what you were seeing. Still no new marks.

You lightly punched the air with your paw in anger and defeat. Everything was so clear to you know. Of course you had the artist block and lack of enthusiasm for your work. What was the point of drawing anything if there was no one to criticize it? You were a fool to think anything of yours was worthy any attention of the other smeargle, or Arceus forbid, any of the more respectable smeargle.

You went back to your room to sulk. Your mood was too bad to review other works and give them markings. You risked giving them snappy remarks and overly harsh criticisms. You couldn't concentrate. It was as if all your work was for nothing; it's only purpose to be ignored by everyone in the community, undeserved of any kind of attention.

Had you been too ambitious? You lay down on your bed to think about that fact. Maybe your aspiring attitude had led you to the delusion of going to take the community by storm. You put the backside of your paw on your forehead, sighing. What a fool you were to think even that. You were and felt pathetic. You contemplated just quitting painting all together. Why bother if there was no attention to get from it?

You sat up and shuffled to the upper side of your bed. You rested your back against the wall and twiddled your paws after your latest thought. Was it really right to think like this? Maybe you just had bad timing or the other smeargle in the community were busy? Did you really paint for yourself or for the attention? Art was an expression, and you were eager to let that expression flow into your paint. The search for your own self-proclaimed magnum opus… was the urge for recognition and fame in there too, without you knowing it?

You were conflicted by your thoughts and ponderings. Maybe you had gotten an unfortunate inflation within your own ego?

You tilted your head to look at your easel. The canvas was of an undisturbed pale white. You hadn't even begun to plan the next part of your painting yet, and here you were, moping and pitying yourself. How were you supposed to be able to make an impression if you weren't doing anything? You shifted your legs to the edge of the bed and sat up. It was time you at least started a sketch of the next part.

You hopped down from the bed and gently grabbed the tip of your tail to start the sketch. As you raised it and neared it towards the canvas, a plethora of thoughts interrupted your concentration. It was the doubts of putting effort into it. You stared at the canvas for what seemed to be forever. You couldn't move your arm or tail. The inspiration was gone.

Time had flown quickly; it was already evening. You drew a sigh and had a quick dinner before heading to bed. Maybe it was for the better this awful day came to an end. You almost wanted to cry yourself to sleep. Not out of rejection, not out of jealousy, but of confusion and contemplation of considering putting more of your hobby into doing this anymore.

As you lay in your bed you found it difficult to sleep. A lot of thoughts were spinning around in your mind, taunting you with ideas and inspiration that would escape you the moment you attempted to paint them out on your canvas. It didn't feel fair.

A new day dawned, but you didn't get out of bed until late that morning. You sullenly ambled your way along the corridor of this unappreciative community, making your way to your own little sanctuary where you had your listed works published. As you passed some newly updated works, you saw very fresh marks on them. With quick and deceitful glances at said works, you judged them as average at best. Probably out of spite.

With a sigh, you got to your area where your works were. Maybe there were some errors you hadn't noticed before that needed a touch-up. You could easily have fixed that up had you gotten any marks of criticism regarding that. But no, other smeargle had to be complete ignoramuses.

You saw a new mark on your latest painting.

"Nice work. Can't wait to see more," it said. It wasn't much. No criticism. Just a little praise and possible expectancy for future parts. Signs of someone being interested.

You smiled.

* * *

A/N: No, this is not a cry for reviews. It's just an attempted interpretation for those who do not get much recognition. Maybe you can relate?


End file.
